Some Loose Ends and the Computational Error
by pisoprano
Summary: Part 3 of The Computational Error Series. Remus Lupin is still stuck in the Well. The world he left is still going on without him. But he ought to be able to do SOMETHING about that, right?
1. Transrational

DISCLAIMER: JK Rowling is the gem responsible for Harry Potter and his world. I only remixed her work (with a dash of some other people's) a few times.

 **Some Loose Ends and the Computational Error**

* * *

Transrational

* * *

A yellow book dropped onto Blair's desk.

"There's no excuse for you to keep Remus in the Well now," the interloper said. "Long range time travel is canon. Has been for over a year of real time now. Logically, I can just send him back to his reality."

Blair idly flipped through the pages of _The Cursed Child_. "Perhaps it would be doable. But only with a 'true time turner' designed for going that far into the past. Remus has no such device, he utilized a spell of _your_ making."

The interloper scowled. "You're just saying that to make my life more difficult, aren't you? Come on, you let him go back to the 1960s timeline once already!"

"And then he came right back here after, what, a month? I only agreed to send him back because of the after-July loophole. That no longer applies."

"Then I guess I'll just have to find a new loophole," the interloper grumbled.

"By all means try," Blair said. "In fact, I hereby give Remus clearance to go back. But only if neither you nor I directly use our...more heavy-handed world-changing capabilities to send him there. No creating new brothers out of whole cloth, no leaving out a magical device that can send him home, nothing of that sort."

"Let him do anything on his own merits?" the interloper asked. "Fine. As long as he can get help from all the other characters and use any concepts I've already stated or implied to exist to their fullest potential."

"That was a bit more leeway than I was expecting to give you, but I'll trust your judgment to not make a deus ex machina," Blair said, extending his hand out to the interloper. "At the very least, I expect you to agree that from this point forward, neither you nor I will interact with these characters and that whatever Well settings that are currently place will remain as such."

The interloper raised a single finger. "Can I at least leave Remus one last message to let him know what's happening?"

Blair shrugged. "I suppose that's fair."

The interloper quickly wrote a note within _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ for Remus to read later, then took Blair's proffered hand and shook it. "No more interference."

"No more interference," Blair agreed. "Oh, and one more thing."

The interloper winced. "What?"

Blair smiled. "Welcome back. Do you know what you're going to do with this story of yours?"

"Not entirely, yet," the interloper admitted. "But I'm working on it."

* * *

Everything resumed existence.

Remus came to, shivering. Not existing was something like when he'd been a mindless werewolf, only much worse: those nights of powerlessness only lasted the night; this one had gone on for months, maybe years. It was impossible to tell, since the Well of Lost Plots didn't exactly come with a clock or interact with the outside world properly.

He picked a direction and started walking. It didn't take long (or rather, didn't seem to—again, no time in the Well) to find Lysander and the author of _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ talking.

"Hasnohumhear is a perfectly fine name!" Lysander was saying.

"I don't want people thinking I can't hum or hear, they already can't see me," the author replied.

"You already said Hshh didn't have enough vowels, now there's five of them!"

"Why are you even trying to give me a new name?" the author complained. "I don't need one. 'Author' works just fine."

"What if someone starts confusing you with the interloper?" Lysander asked. "Or the creator? Both of them count as authors too!"

"It's possible," Remus cut in. "I have no idea what you or those two look like, so you three might look exactly the same for all I know."

"Remus!" Lysander cried, running to give the werewolf a _far_ too tight hug. "You're back!"

"Lysander," Remus choked out. "Need. Air."

"Says who?" Lysander retorted, squeezing him even tighter. "I'm not convinced you've breathed even once in all your time in the Well."

"Welcome back," the author said, something of a smile in his voice.

The hug mercifully ended but Lysander stayed in Remus' personal space. "What did the interloper say? We were wondering when something was going to happen."

Remus tilted his head in confusion. "Didn't you notice that we stopped existing for a while?"

"Isn't that always our fate when we humans go to sleep, only to rise again triumphantly when the night is o'er?" Lysander asked, flaring his arm upward dramatically.

Remus did his best to exchange a glance with the author. It didn't work (for obvious reasons) so Remus fell back on using his words to communicate with the unseen wizard. "Shouldn't _you_ be the one to talk flowery, being an author and all?"

"Hey, I just wrote my memoir," the author defended. "Lysander is the Antipodean Opaleye here, not me."

"I'm a human being, thank you very much—and how do we know that _you're_ not the one who is secretly a dragon?" Lysander countered. "If I can't see you that means I can't see that you're not a dragon."

"I'm pretty sure being a werewolf and being a dragon are mutually exclusive," the author deadpanned.

"Ah, well, I guess there's that," Lysander conceded. "Wait: Remus, you said something about noticing our non-existence? Meaning that you _did_ notice it? In the interest of gaining knowledge for its own sake, what was it like?"

"I guess you could say it was like an extended coma," Remus said, looking away from the man. "Except I got stuck being aware of my lack of actuality the whole time. Anyway, since I wasn't back in the Outlands when I popped back into being, I haven't seen the interloper since. We need to figure out why she brought me back."

"The Outlands is author business," Lysander said. "And by 'author' I mean our author. And by 'our author' I mean the one who wrote _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ , not the interloper who brought us into existence. And by 'brought into existence,' I don't mean the creator, I mean—"

"We get it, Lysander," Remus said.

"See, _this_ is why we need to come up with a better name for him," Lysander said.

"How about 'Mr. Author'?" Remus suggested. "The other two author-types are both female."

"I'll take it if Lysander will _stop bugging me about it_ ," the author—Mr. Author—relented. "Moving on: Remus, did you check my book to see if the interloper left any messages?"

"I left it at my old house before I transformed—" Remus started to say, then hit his forehead. "Right, being in the Well will let me just summon a copy of the book into existence here."

Said copy of _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ appeared in Remus' hand and he flipped through the pages for anything handwritten. In the Afterword, the interloper had scrawled something in the margin.

 _I'm still not entirely sure what I'm going to do with you but I've decided that I know enough to bring you back into existence. Don't seek out Blair or me, we've decided that noninterference on our part regarding you is for the best going forward. Now I'll stop breaking the fourth wall and let you get back to doing something productive while I stay out of your way. If you want something done, do it yourself._

 _All my love,_

 _the interloper_

Remus flipped through the book one more time, just in case anything else appeared, but only what had been written previously was there. He turned back to his two Well companions. "Would either of you happen to know what the fourth wall is?"

"It's what usually protects us from interacting with the non-imaginary plane," Mr. Author said. "Why?"

"It was something the interloper mentioned," Remus said, pointing to the message. "She was breaking it just by writing to me, apparently."

Lysander laughed as he skimmed the note. "It'd be more accurate to say that, for us at least, there is no fourth wall. Although now that I think about it, maybe she was trying to give you one final hint before she went mum forever."

Remus waited for Lysander to go into details. The blond, for once, didn't continue on his own. Remus sighed, and vocalized the question. "Are you going to explain the hint or not?"

"Nah, if she'd wanted you to have the answers right now—and this is me assuming that there actually _is_ a hint hidden in the message and that what I noticed isn't some red herring or forgotten plot thread—she would've said it outright," Lysander said. "You'll have to figure it out on your own time. Earn it, so to speak. Like the rest of us non-protagonists."

"Have you _ever_ actually been helpful?" Remus muttered.

"Well, I enabled George to send you back in time, does that count?"

Remus flicked Lysander's ear with a stinging hex in response. It'd been awhile since he'd used the spell, not since James and Sirius had had a particularly horrible idea and Remus had needed to make sure they didn't try to exercise their brains in that direction ever again. A part of him wished he still had them around. Even just Sirius would have been nice.

But it was Remus' own fault for getting involved with time travel. Old George had given him plenty of warnings and Remus had listened to none of them. At least he still had friends by his side. Friends who, in all honestly, were more accepting and helpful than Remus probably deserved, but he probably should've expected as much from the grandson of the nicest magizoologist in the world and the werewolf author who Remus had looked up to since he was a teenager. He might not want to make the Well of Lost Plots his permanent home but, with a little help from his friends here, he could accomplish something great.

Or, at the very least, they could forestall the possibility of becoming completely non-existent again anytime soon. No pressure.

* * *

So...it's been 3 years since I posted _Remus Lupin and the Computational Error_ but I'm back! I wasn't sure if that was actually going to happen or not, but time away from Remus' story helped generate some new ideas. I'll try to update this fanfic once a week, but since I'm still working out some kinks, I won't make any promises except this one: there won't be a cliffhanger as brutal as last time. Anything else happening is fair game, though. Mua ha ha.

All my love,

pisoprano


	2. Transitive

DISCLAIMER: JK Rowling is the gem responsible for Harry Potter and his world. I only remixed her work (with a dash of some other people's) a few times.

* * *

Transrational

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 18 March 1965, 7:14 am_

The moon had set and the werewolf that Lyall Lupin and Alastor Moody (mostly Moody) had spent the entire night subduing finally reverted to human form. Unsurprisingly, it was the so-called "Muggle tramp" Lyall had accused of being a werewolf just over a month earlier. One stunner later, and the wandless, clothesless, and clawless werewolf was fully unconscious.

"I hate werewolves," Moody groaned.

Lyall was about to murmur his agreement when he remembered the werewolf who'd helped protect his family. "I need to go."

"I can handle things from here," Moody told him, "just a quick portkey and this werewolf will be sitting in a Ministry cell and I'll write up the incident report. But before you go, I must ask: why in Merlin's name did you think it was a good idea to bring him here in the first place?"

"I...I can't remember," Lyall realized. "I know R.J. came to help protect the house from Fenrir Greyback—I can remember that much—but as for the actual attack there or how we got here...nothing."

"You should probably head straight for a mind healer and see if you can get your memory back," Moody advised. "It can be harder to heal the longer you wait."

"I know that," Lyall snapped, then felt guilty for it. He should _really_ go to bed before he did something he regretted, but if he didn't help R.J. he _would_ regret it. Then again, if his memory was wiped, Lyall couldn't be sure whether R.J. was actually the one behind it.

Better to know the facts before rushing into a fight that had started hours ago.

"I was just making sure you remember," Moody placated. "The memory of how to treat memory loss is usually the best thing to attack when you want to make sure the victim forgets. Whoever used the memory charm on you probably wasn't very good or just didn't have the time. Where does your memory pick up again?"

"Somewhere in the middle of the fight, I think," Lyall said. "Do you remember how I got here?"

Moody stared at him a moment, then began swearing. It looked like Lyall's trip to the mind healers was not going to be made alone.

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 18 March 1965, 7:18 am_

Some days, Alastor Moody really hated that wizards invented memory charms. Other days, he was glad that wizards had made an easy way to make Muggles forget the magic they'd seen. Today was most definitely a day for hating it.

The Ministry had mind healers, of course, but Moody didn't trust them much. They were a part of the bureaucracy and probably had instructions to keep the deep, dark Ministry secrets mum. And Alastor didn't really trust the people who decided what was worth keeping secret. So, instead, he and Lyall went to St. Mungo's—it wasn't _that_ much better, but at least they were nominally apolitical. Luckily for him, a mind healer he knew and had a decent amount of trust in was on duty.

"Alastor, what brings you here at this early hour?" Healer Strout asked. She nodded her head towards Lupin. "Did he see something you want recovered?"

"Something from earlier tonight, I think," Alastor said, "but whatever it is he isn't remembering, I've got a blank spot there too. I'm guessing we were both blasted by the same wizard while we were wrangling with one werewolf."

"My, you _do_ get up to a lot of excitement," Healer Strout laughed, taking out her wand. She pointed it at Lupin's head and started muttering incantations. A minute and a half later she stopped.

"Well?" Lupin asked.

"I've never seen an memory charm this clean," she admitted. "Meddling with the mind almost always leaves traces, a hint of what's missing or at least fading in the memories surrounding it, but I found a perfect bubble of nothing in your head. Alastor, let me verify it's the same for you."

Alastor lowered his mental shields and let Healer Strout in. He felt her lightly touch his mind, occasionally letting a memory of the previous night flash before dying down again. Alastor had only opened that period of time to her, but his vigilance was unnecessary: she only touched upon that stretch of memory.

She withdrew. "It's exactly the same, down to the second. I'm going to need some help with this."

"Healer Strout," Lupin interjected, "you wouldn't happen to remember if there was anything noteworthy going on at that time, would you?"

The healer was silent a moment before she too became a shade or two paler. "Merlin's beard, I'm affected too. I won't rule out some sort of magical mental parasite I somehow picked up from examining you two, but if it's not... For all we know, all of London might be affected, maybe even the whole country. You— _we_ —don't need mind healers; we need to make sure the Department of Mysteries can contain whatever this is."

"I'll get Albus Dumbledore down there too," Alastor volunteered. The headmaster was as impartial a party as there could ever be, and he might even have some instrument in his office that had measured something of the anomaly. Alastor didn't make a habit of utilizing Albus' knowledge when he didn't have to, but he figured that mass inexplicable memory inaccessibility was adequate reason.

He flicked his wand, saying "Expecto Patronum." A flash of white started running north.

 _Albus, I've just ran into three cases of perfect memory loss over the period of one hour last night, myself included. I don't know how many people have been affected but I have reason to suspect that it's quite a lot. Go to the Department of Mysteries. I'll meet you there._

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 18 March 1965, 7:27 am_

Albus Dumbledore was on his way to the fireplace before Alastor's message even finished. If the paranoid Auror was bringing him into a potential crisis, he knew it was serious.

He arrived in the rotating room of the Department of Mysteries and found that Alastor was already there. With him were Ms. Strout and Mr. Lupin, two of Albus' former students and likely the two others to be confirmed to have lost memory. Mr. Bode, yet another Hogwarts alumnus (though Albus had not personally taught him, as the young Unspeakable's school years were concurrent with Albus' headmaster ones), came to greet the group. Greet was not the right word. Mr. Bode more or less demanded at wandpoint that they all go home.

Albus cleared his throat, making the young man flush when he realized just who it was he was talking to. "Mr. Bode, I'm afraid that a rather urgent matter has come up. I am sure Mr. Moody was about to explain it to you."

Alastor took that as his cue to start talking. "Three out of three of the people we've checked so far had memory loss between the hours of 6 and 7 pm this past night, during which time the moon rose and we both started fighting a werewolf. Lupin and I weren't together beforehand, but as far as we can tell, Healer Strout had no opportunity to be exposed to whatever conditions we were unless it was a mental contagion or widespread spell of some sort."

Albus had already run through his memory for holes and found none. He was about to say as much when Mr. Bode just about dropped his wand.

"I...I can't..." Mr. Bode stuttered.

"So you've got the blank spot too?" Alastor asked, grimacing as he returned Mr. Bode's wand to him. "And they say you're all protected from major anomalies down here. How big _is_ this thing? Just London or..."

"Alastor," Albus interrupted, "I believe I may have insight into this problem. For one, I was not affected—"

"So Scotland's safe, that's good," Alastor said.

"I was not affected _this time_ ," Dumbledore finished.

"You've seen this happen before?" Mr. Bode asked.

"Indeed. Five years ago, on July 31st, I—along with what I believe is every other person on the planet—lost an hour of memories. I did not realize that I had a blank spot until earlier this past month, when an individual who called himself R.J. Thewlis brought it to my attention."

Mr. Lupin started. "R.J.? What does he have to do with this?"

In that moment, Dumbledore noticed a great deal of resemblance between the man to whom he was speaking and the man about whom he was speaking. "I suspect quite a bit, Mr. Lupin. And it seems equally likely that our mutual friend has just fallen off the face of the Earth again."

"Again?" Alastor repeated. "Who _is_ this guy?"

"A werewolf," Mr. Lupin said. "Not the one we fought, though."

Albus blinked. "I was not aware of Mr. Thewlis' lycanthropy, but I think it has little bearing on the fluctuations of whether or not he exists." He held up a hand before those present could bombard him with questions. "I am bound to not speak of it, but I may be able to figure out the spell that protected my mind from being affected during this iteration. I'd need a test subject, though."

"Test it on me," Mr. Bode said. "I might be the lowliest of them, but I'm still an Unspeakable. Whatever your secret method is, it should remain with the Department of Mysteries until we have proved it non-lethal. It's my job to take these risks, not civilians."

Albus nodded, rather certain that this bright young man might not be "the lowliest of them" for long, if his inclination towards proactiveness was any indicator. He raised his wand and placed it on Mr. Bode's temple.

Albus concentrated on the moment that 'Mr. Thewlis' had protected his own mind, looking for something that felt like that feeling. It took some time, but eventually he found that sensation of weightlessness that was much like existing and not existing. It was more intense, being on the caster's side of things, but he had no doubt that this was right.

But, once in this state, figuring out what to do next was much more difficult. There was not precisely a light flashing "Touch me to protect this mind from intrusion!" Focusing on Occlumency techniques, no matter how simple or complex, didn't produce anything. He tried to find something on time travel, but that proved fruitless as well. Albus wasn't going to give up, though. He just needed to think about the problem in a different way.

Mr. Thewlis had used the spell as if it belonged more to those who had brief periods of non-existence than to those merely curious, like Albus. Was this strange spell even designed to protect a mind, or was that a side effect? Was the true spell more along the lines of making sure there was a copy of the mind that couldn't be erased? And if that was the case, would it be possible to recover the memories that had been lost? Admittedly, Mr. Thewlis hadn't tried to bring back Albus' memories of the lost hour with the spell, but was that because of ignorance on the time-traveler's part? Or even a matter of convenience, since they had proceeded to have the lost conversation again? Knowing what was coming, the conversation might have been improved the second time around, and pitfalls avoided. At least one pitfall _was_ avoided, in that Albus didn't voice the presence of time travel that time through.

Albus started reaching out for something of memory restoration, repair, reintegration, _something_. And he got a response.

 _Reintegrate? Yes, reintegrate. Reintegrate your previous self with your current self and remember._

Young Bode started shaking.

Albus quickly ended the spell, but whatever change he'd just wrought upon the young man refused to let up. Bode grabbed his head sunk to the floor.

Healer Strout quickly knelt by Bode and looked into his eyes. They were unresponsive. "Albus Dumbledore, _what did you do?_ "

"I'm unsure, Healer Strout," Albus said. "I believed I was using the spell correctly. He shouldn't be in pain like this."

"Everyone else get out," Healer Strout said. As Lupin and Moody went to do so, the healer pointed her wand at Bode. Before she could cast anything, however, the wizard regained some lucidity and pushed the wand point away.

"Don't look in my head," Bode managed to get out. "Too much."

The mediwitch assured him she wouldn't and began running through what Albus recognized to be physical diagnostic spells. They turned up no issues, and without the patient's consent to assess his mind, Healer Strout could do no more.

Nonetheless, Bode's breathing eased. The Unspeakable opened his eyes and looked right at Albus. "How in the name of Saint George did you make that spell do that?"

"I am not entirely sure myself," Albus replied, a bit confused as to why Bode had chosen to curse by the patron saint of England of all things. "What, precisely, are your symptoms?"

"If I told you, I think I'd might end up like that werewolf you all were talking about," Bode said. "Nonetheless, you _did_ manage to protect my mind. You just did it the hard way. You're lucky that I was your guinea pig or that _never_ would have worked."

"Can you explain?" Albus asked.

Bode sighed. "You could say I got a good _long_ look at where your 'R.J.' came from. I don't know where he is now or how he managed to come back from there at all, but his origins? Saint George told me everything, including how that spell was supposed to work. You were supposed to access the Invisibility Function, not whatever thing you poked your wand at."

"I apologize for this, Mr. Bode," Healer Strout interrupted, "but if you still refuse to allow me to read your mind, I should take you to St. Mungo's for observation."

"To make sure I haven't gone completely mad, hm?" Bode asked. "Fine, it's not like intern duties were something I wanted to go right back to."

"May I have a private moment with you first, Mr. Bode?" Albus asked. To the mediwitch, he said. "You can consider this a part of ensuring his good health."

Healer Strout, though obviously miffed at the whole situation, acquiesced the request. Bode led Albus into the Time Room, where the headmaster cast several wards, in case the healer was too vigilant about keeping her new patient under watch.

"Tell me the year," Albus asked as soon as their privacy was mostly assured. They couldn't speak completely freely, if Albus' suspicions as to what Bode was were correct: a time traveler. Not quite like R.J. was, if Albus understood correctly, but close enough that 'Blair' (whoever he was) might get involved if Albus didn't tread carefully.

"1965."

"And if I were to ask you to give me some other year, you'd say...?"

"1992," Bode replied. Assuming that it was the year Bode had come from, that would make the wizard 45 years old—mentally, at least.

"And Harry Potter?" Albus prodded.

"So you _do_ know something," Bode said, his mouth twitching up in a smile. "He defeated the Dark Lord. Again, I mean."

Albus nodded. Bode must be referring to the incident with the Philosopher's Stone. "If your presence in the here and now is less than permanent, I'd ask that you refuse any gifts of plants, especially once 1996 rolls around."

Bode started laughing. "I think your werewolf friend neglected to mention a few things to you. I know _all_ about that. If he pops up again, ask him to tell you more about Saint George, then send him to me so I can fill him in on what he's missed out on in the year since the Time Turner Collapse. But first, I need to know: _what_ part of the spell did you touch?"

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 18 March 1965, 7:31 am_

Augustus Rookwood was stuck with late night/early morning shift at the Department of Mysteries. It was what all beginning Unspeakables did, keeping an eye on the experiments run by their superiors, who had earned the right to have office hours at a reasonable part of the day. At least the shift was almost over, Augustus just had to take readings on the brains. He didn't care for the task much. No matter how many precautions he took, the brains always ended up stinging him, most of the time right on his face. He'd probably have the pockmarks for the rest of his life. No, Rookwood would much rather be working in the Death Chamber, or maybe the Hall of Prophecies. Merlin, even the _Love Chamber_ would be preferable to this, and that room terrified everybody so much that they always kept the doors locked.

Still, Augustus had to take measurements if he was ever going to move up in the world. He put his wand into the fluid of the brain tank and started muttering incantations under his breath. He soon discovered something odd: there'd been a period of total dormancy sometime earlier that night.

Augustus summoned the 1960–1969 Brain Logbook, to see if the underling Unspeakable who'd taken measurements earlier in the day had noted anything to watch out for. Nothing. He put his wand into the brain fluid again to test it again. He got the same result, except this time he also got stung on the nose by one of the brain's tendrils for his trouble.

Augustus carefully wrote his observations (invalid as they may be) in the logbook, then started skimming through it, looking for anything that might give him a hint as to what he should do. He didn't want to be flooing his superior less than an hour before he was due to arrive unless Augustus already had the answers that he'd just be ordered to look for anyway.

In an entry from almost five years earlier, he found something: a question mark instead of a number. The handwriting of this particular underling was spectacularly bad, and it might have been mistaken for a 7, even though that value made no sense in this context. The handwriting changed soon afterward, indicating that he or she had either been fired or moved to another department. Augustus would have to do some digging to figure out who that person was and track them down to see whether they could comment on the question mark. He checked the remainder of the logbook (nothing else of value), then went looking for the records of who was working here five years ago. It wasn't kept in the Brain Room, but rather in his superior's office. Fortunately, Augustus had borrowed the key.

He was about to enter the Rotating Room (it was faster to get to the offices that way) when voices on the other side of the door stopped him. Those voices were talking about _memory problems._ Augustus decided to wait outside and listen instead of intruding—what they were talking about may or may not be related to the brains issue, but he got the sense that his intrusion would be unwelcome. And even if the speakers _did_ want him there, Augustus preferred having the option of simply leaving should the conversation turn out to be pointless—the least rude way of doing so was to pretend to not be there in the first place.

As he listened, Broderick Bode—yes, the only Unspeakable who was even lower in the hierarchy than Augustus himself—seemed to suddenly became the most knowledgeable person on whatever phenomena it was that had caused dormancy in the brains. However that knowledge came to Bode, it was clear that it hadn't been properly earned and that irked Augustus to no end. Even so, Augustus had heard everything he'd needed to. He could give a complete report to his superior, once he double checked who was working the Brain Room five years ago. Augustus had a little over twenty minutes before said superior would arrive.

But first, the things Augustus had just learned _really_ ought to be reported to a certain Dark Lord to whom he had sworn. After all, the Unspeakables had all taken vows to not reveal secrets discovered by the Department of Mysteries. If Augustus told Lord Voldemort about something he'd overheard from civilians and the lowest ranking Unspeakable in the place, _that_ didn't count as classified secrets, only hearsay—at least until he was ordered otherwise.

 _I adore loopholes_ , Augustus thought to himself as he made his way to a fireplace so he could floo-call the Dark Lord's headquarters.


	3. Transmundane

DISCLAIMER: JK Rowling is the gem responsible for Harry Potter and his world. I only remixed her work (with a dash of some other people's) a few times.

* * *

Transmundane

* * *

Lysander felt something weird. He hadn't felt something _this_ weird since Remus went back to the universe he'd traveled to. It was different though, like ripples in the fabric of reality. Whatever it was, it felt _big_.

He needed to start theorizing about it.

But to do that, he needed more data. First he did a quick probe of the Well to see if its population had changed (it hadn't). He hadn't really expected that sort of change, but it was good to check before doing something a bit more thorough. For that, he decided to use the spell that he'd once used on George Weasley to keep him invisible from the universe, something Lysander had started to think of as the "Cognition Spell" the more he learned about it. The Cognition Spell had been discovered in the far-flung future right around the time the Department of Mysteries discovered the long-range Time Travel Spell (or rediscovered, as some Unspeakables believed—there were a lot of unrecoverable records in the Time Division after a series of incidents involving freshly liberated house elves armed with chainsaws in the 2020s and Lysander had been sent to the Well before he could get around to reading the undamaged versions). Both Cognition and Time Travel spells actually tapped into reality in very similar ways. While the Time Travel Spell was powerful enough to break off a piece of reality and reshape it, the Cognition Spell was able to alter the internal knowledge of a reality. The people from the timeline that had created the two spells just considered them complements to each other—and when it took them centuries to recover from the temporal damage of the most cursory of experiments with them, they created the Memory Book and didn't dare go outside known parameters again.

After arriving in the Well of Lost Plots, Lysander was able to talk with those who also came from failed timelines, some of whom tried to experiment with the Cognition Spell (only to make the universe backlash through deportation). Once in the Well, though, there was no more punishment for dabbling with unruly spells. Using the Cognition Spell from inside the Well didn't _actually_ work the same way, since there was no reality to manipulate, but it did have its uses as a diagnostic tool, which was what Lysander needed right now.

Lysander pointed his wand at his own head and opened his mind to outside realities. This provided him with a sensory overload and sensory deprivation simultaneously—all the realities, but no sense that Lysander himself ever existed. Well, the whole 'being fictional' thing meant he really _didn't_ exist, but that was besides the point. He channeled his focus on whatever weird feeling it was that had prompted him to do this and found himself looking at another iteration of the Cognition Spell. Something about it made him all but certain that what he was looking at was occurring within Remus' most recent reality. Which shouldn't have been possible, since Remus wasn't there to cast the spell and he hadn't taught it to anyone, as far as Lysander was aware. But what was weirder was that the caster had sat idling for several minutes of real time before accessing a function that no one had ever identified except as what the universe sometimes did when sending someone to the Well: reintegration.

It was beyond rare—Lysander himself and a handful of others were some of the only people who'd experienced the phenomenon (not even Remus had been reintegrated, possibly thanks to something that Blair or the interloper did when he first showed up, but more likely that Remus didn't have a Generic to reintegrate with in the first place). How was reintegration even supposed to work outside of the Well, anyway? Was the Generic pulled into reality or did some other version from another timeline get pulled into his past or future self's mind? Regardless, the universe ought to notice immediately and send the offender straight to the Well—which it hadn't. But the only way that could have happened was if the mind of the person being reintegrated _was_ already invisible. And the odds of _that_ were...?

Yep, the interloper _definitely_ had something to do with this. Even if she wasn't actively helping Remus anymore, she just _had_ to be involved. Somehow.

* * *

Lysander explained to Remus what had happened elsewhere. Or rather, as much as he could figure out about what happened elsewhere, since there wasn't much to know.

"I don't like us not knowing," Lysander said. "It could be an indication that you're not the center of the universe anymore."

Remus wanted to protest that he'd never been the center of the universe, but he knew that that wasn't really true, not after meeting both the Editor and the interloper and realizing how much direct interference both had done on his behalf. Remus couldn't decide if it would be a good thing that the interloper had brought him back only to focus on somebody else. On the one hand, if his existence stopped being supported again, he probably wouldn't be warned ahead of time; Lysander and Mr. Author seemed to have done better for not having any advanced notice about it. On the other hand, his interaction with the interloper might have made it so that he'd _always_ have that horrible of an experience of it. And now, if she focused on someone else, she'd be less likely to look out for Remus' well being—and while she wasn't particularly good at that, Remus would undoubtedly have been unable to make a difference in the first place without it.

On that note, he considered what would happen if he ever managed to get back to the universe he had once time-traveled to. He might be inserted right back into the moment that Voldemort had read his mind. And even if he appeared later in the timeline, he'd still be in the middle of Voldemort's lair. He'd have to make some contingency plans for when he got there, on top of figuring out how to get back in the first place. And that was assuming he _could_.

"Remus? Hello? Are you having an inner monologue without me?"

Remus was brought back to the man in front of him. "Sorry, Lysander."

"Thinking is good," Lysander said, "but it's the only real thing we've got here in the Well, so it's better to externalize it when we can."

"It's nothing, just some 'what ifs' should this lead to me getting back to reality," Remus said. "And no actual answers. You're _sure_ that the reintegration thing happened in my latest timeline?"

Lysander shrugged. "I mean, it would make far more sense if it happened in George's time frame or in one of my time-traveling predecessors', but my gut is essentially screaming at me that it isn't. I've long since learned that ignoring screaming guts isn't a good idea—both figurative and literal screaming guts alike."

Remus hoped that the literal screaming guts didn't have a story attached to it and just tried to puzzle out the circumstances that had led to the mystery reintegration. "I guess Dumbledore might have reverse-engineered the spell I used to protect his mind, but who would he even cast it on?"

"Whoever it was," Lysander said, "they had to have had mental protection in at least one of the components being reintegrated."

Remus tallied up every person he knew to have had the Invisibility Function activated. Besides himself and Lysander (who were obviously _not_ reintegrated, having not left the Well) and Dumbledore (who was acting in the role of caster) he could only think of one other person.

"Could it have been George?" Remus suggested. "I mean, my timeline would have had to progress thirteen years, minimum, but that's not impossible when there's already been a five-year jump from my perspective."

"But why would Dumbledore be interested in casting the Cognition Spell on George Weasley in the first place, and after over a decade, no less?" Lysander asked. "Honestly, I think he most likely started fiddling with his own mental protections just to see if he could."

"Is that one of your 'gut is screaming at you' ideas?" Remus inquired.

Lysander shook his head. "My guts aren't particularly talkative."

"Of course they aren't," Remus mumbled. "I wish I could just _ask_ Dumbledore, that'd clear up so much." He turned over that thought in his mind. "Wait. Maybe I _can_ ask him. Mr. Author, you around?"

"Of course," a disembodied voice said. "What else am I going to do?"

"Remember how you sent me a message through your book?" Remus asked. "How exactly did that work?"

"I just brought the book into existence here in the Well, then I wrote in it," Mr. Author explained. "The interloper did all the hard bits—I'm not exactly sure what—but I'm guessing she pulled the book from somewhere in your original timeline and stuck it in your pocket once you were in 1965."

"That means that there's _two_ versions of the book, right?" Lysander asked. "Real and imaginary. And the unauthorized 1965 edition too, I guess, so that'd be three unless I was to summon a copy of Remus' transcription here and then there'd be four."

"I left the copy of the book that the interloper left messages in at my house in my last timeline," Remus said. "Do you think if I write in the imaginary version we have here it will update the real version that's still there?"

"It could work," Mr. Author said. "But I'm not sure if _you_ are actually authorized to be sending messages. The interloper may have just opened up communication for me. Or she might have only copied it over the one time and I might not be authorized at all."

"Or _everybody_ in the Well can communicate through books now," Lysander suggested.

"I highly doubt it," Mr. Author said in a dismissive tone. "Regardless, I don't think she's talking to anybody right now—and even if she _was_ , she'd just as likely hinder as help us, so I'm not exactly going to ask for permission or clarification on what we can and can't do anytime soon."

"But sticking as close as possible to how it originally happened is our still best bet," Remus concluded. "Alright then, can you dictate a message for me?"

"To Dumbledore?"

"Well, not Dumbledore directly," Remus said. "I'm guessing Mum or Dad would have picked up the book after I disappeared. Though it's also possible one of the attacking werewolves found it after they changed back... I suppose I just need someone to write back _at all_ first, then we can worry about getting the book into Dumbledore's hands."


	4. Transient

DISCLAIMER: JK Rowling is the gem responsible for Harry Potter and his world. I only remixed her work (with a dash of some other people's) a few times.

* * *

Transient

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 18 March 1965, 1:05 am_

The safe house where Lyall had brought Hope belonged to a couple in their 60s who'd lived in Dorset. The lady of the house had taken it upon herself to act as a guard just outside, in the event that Greyback had human compatriots coming after Hope and the children. The man of the house seemed rather quiet, giving Hope and her boys some space to settle down. Hope had been grateful for that, at first. But once the twins fell asleep, the waiting for Lyall to come back and the accompanying worry had quickly had worn on her. She ended up turning to a few sheets of parchment she'd stashed away in her pocket, reading and rereading the words scrawled therein.

Before she knew it, there was a knock at the door. "Everything alright?"

Hope looked up at the aging wizard and nodded. "Yes, I suppose. Just reading."

"Oh," he said, not quite meeting her gaze. "Anything interesting?"

She held up the pages for him to view. "R.J. left this on my porch by accident. He's got some opinions about werewolves that are rather novel, if I understand correctly."

The wizard's interest sparked at that. "Does he? Do tell."

"Mostly it has to do with werewolf legal rights and place in society. Are you familiar with the Muggle state of affairs in America right now? With civil rights, I mean."

"My wife is an American and we've spent a fair amount of time over there," the wizard explained. "So yes, you could say I've heard about it."

The Civil Rights Movement hadn't been a subject Hope had known much about until a couple years ago, when she'd been reading the Western Mail, the newspaper from her native Cardiff. The paper's editor detailed a proposal of one John Petts, a glass window maker who had been horrified upon hearing that members of the Ku Klux Klan had bombed a certain church in Birmingham, killing four girls. Petts wanted to replace the church's stained glass window that had been destroyed and he made it an opportunity for the people of Wales to unite in funding this symbol of comfort and support. He asked for small donations only—none more than half a crown—and Hope instantly knew she wanted to contribute. Ever since sending in her meager amount of Muggle coins, she'd made it a point to be more active in learning about the suffering in the world and do what was in her power to alleviate it. To her shame, she hadn't even realized that she'd been neglectful of the wizard-side of discrimination until she'd started reading R.J.'s articles.

"The way R.J. writes about life as a werewolf reminds me of what I know of what American colored folk have experienced," Hope said. "Werewolves may claim citizenship in Magical Britain, but they don't have an actual voice in the government. They are disproportionately convicted of crimes, denied economic opportunities, and flat out banned from many public places. The fact that a werewolf can be killed without hardly anyone blinking an eye sounds a more than a little like what the KKK has spent too long getting away with."

The wizard rubbed the bridge of his nose, grimacing. "You _do_ realize that werewolves are one of the most deadly creatures known to wizard-kind, right? With most magical creatures there's a measure of restraint you can pull out of them if you just listen to them and give them the proper respect. Werewolves, when transformed, are _physically incapable_ of that kind of rational behavior. I'm not saying I approve of killing them—I don't approve of ending any life—but I can...understand why that level of self-defence is still sanctioned against creatures who will, with absolute certainty, attack any person in the vicinity with the intent and capacity to kill."

"Is it still self-defence when the werewolf is still in human form?" Hope asked. "Because that's how three out of four werewolves are killed, according to R.J."

The wizard frowned. "I'll admit I've been less diligent than I'd like to be in staying up to date on the specifics of the werewolf population—almost all of my scholastic focus has been swamped in the regulating experimental breeding as of late. I'll concede that R.J.'s statistics _sound_ plausible, at least."

Hope let out a breath. "I'm honestly surprised you've yet to accuse me of being a complete hypocrite for wanting to stand up for werewolves in the first place. Here I am, _in the very act_ of hiding my family from being found by a vengeful werewolf, talking about _helping_ their kind."

The wizard gave her a fatherly smile. "I think you standing up for them is noble. Wizards have this...tendency to think everything is out to kill us. Ironic given that humans—and wizards in particular—are the ones with all the best advantages. But when something looks even the slightest bit scary, we make ourselves even scarier so they'll leave us alone. It's a coping mechanism found in quite a lot of creatures, I've found."

"Just not in transformed werewolves," Hope concluded.

"But it _is_ in untransformed ones," the wizard continued, smiling. He gestured to R.J.'s papers. "Do you think R.J. would mind if I took the opportunity to read his thoughts on the matter?"

"I don't see why not," Hope said. "Though R.J. didn't exactly _finish_ writing them—I think my husband distracted him and then there was the whole thing with the full moon. But after R.J. transforms back, I'm sure he wouldn't mind talking to you."

"I'd probably like that. First-hand werewolf accounts are rather hard to come by—insular community and whatnot. Though I _did_ hear something about such a book being published around a month ago. R.J.'s handiwork?"

"I'm not sure," Hope replied. "I know R.J. brought a book to read while waiting for the moon to go down last month, but I didn't get a good look at it then. All I know for sure is that he didn't leave it on the porch earlier tonight. But it wouldn't surprise me if he wrote the book you're thinking of, or at least owned it."

"Regardless, I think I'll have to track down a copy," he said, then frowned. "Wait, you mean he read the book _during_ his time in werewolf form?"

"Yes?" Hope asked, unsure of what the wizard was getting at.

"Meaning that he was in full control of his faculties?"

"As far as I know," Hope replied. "Lyall was confused by that too."

"That's more than confusing, it's potentially revolutionary!" the wizard exclaimed. "If werewolves had a means to make themselves safe, then the laws will _have_ to change to accommodate them."

"Just because the law changes, it won't mean that the prejudice will just go away," Hope noted.

"I wouldn't expect it to—we wizards are _notorious_ for getting stuck in our ways—but when we get hit by something hard enough, it'll get through our thick skulls. More or less."

"Do you suppose I could assist in 'getting it through your skulls' somehow?" Hope asked. "I know my being a Muggle won't exactly lend me a lot of credibility, but I can't help but think that my outsider perspective on the situation will see something you've blinded yourselves to."

"Speaking as a wizard who's worked alongside Muggles in the past, I have little doubt you'll prove your worth in no time. But first things first," he said, taking R.J.'s papers into his hands. "I _seriously_ need to get back up to speed on current werewolf events."

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 18 March 1965, 8:18 am_

Alastor Moody had been at work for _far_ too long. His original shift had been a very long one already, then the werewolf Greyback had showed up and Alastor had fought to contain the beast for somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 hours, then there was the whole mess with memories being lost. A very strong part of him wanted to simply go to sleep or to at least find someone other than himself to take care of the last few details of the night. But there was one detail he wanted to check up on before turning over The Case of Lyall Lupin and the Werewolves to some two-sickle auror who didn't know what he was doing. He needed to see the crime scene Lupin last remembered being at.

Enough time had passed that any werewolves who had been at the Lupin residence would most likely be long gone, but Alastor remained on his guard as he and the homeowner took the floo there.

Alastor noted some paw prints on the floorboards and rug that lead up to the fireplace and cast Homenum Revelio. The spell found no one in the building so Alastor signaled to Lupin that it was tentatively safe to proceed. Alastor gave the room a brief examination for clues, finding that the furniture was somewhat disheveled and that there were teeth marks on the doorknob of the back door. On the _inside_ of the back door.

Alastor was about to turn the knob to see if teeth marks would be found on the outside as well when Lupin stopped him. "Wait. I may not remember everything from last night, but I remember that R.J. left some sort of blood wards on all the entrances to the house."

The auror groaned. "And you didn't think to mention this earlier because...?"

"It's been a busy night," Lupin defended (as if the man had more right to that excuse than Alastor himself and you didn't see _him_ complaining), then reached to turn the knob himself. As Alastor opened his mouth to protest, Lupin held a hand up. "I'll be fine, R.J. keyed me into the wards and I remember passing through them without injury."

Alastor didn't think that Lupin should trust that these blood wards would still operate as they had before, but the wizard was already touching the knob and opening the door without ill effect. Alastor wasn't about to go through the door himself, though, so he pulled a live spider from his pocket (handy things, live spiders) and floated it through the doorway. The spider contorted in agony.

"Are you _positive_ you want to exit through that door?" Alastor asked.

"I...erm...maybe we can go over the rest of the house first to see how Greyback got in?" Lupin suggested sheepishly, closing the door.

Alastor grunted his agreement and returned to the mess by the fireplace. He cast a spell to make the werewolf footprints easier to see, then backtracked the trail until it reached a broken window in the children's bedroom.

"R.J. warded the doors but not the windows," Alastor surmised. "Rookie mistake."

Lupin poked his head through the void in the window pane to look at the state of his home's exterior. "I think I see R.J.'s clothes," he told the auror. "Why didn't he come back for them?"

"It hasn't been that long since the moon went down," Alastor pointed out as he approached the window. "He might not be in a state to apparate right now."

"I'm pretty sure he's apparated while in the middle of transforming into a werewolf," Lupin said, "I doubt he considers post-lunar apparation a problem. And didn't Dumbledore think that R.J. 'fell off the face of the earth'? We need to figure out what exactly happened to him."

The creature expert proceeded to jump through the window and approach the folded pile of clothes. Alastor moved to follow after him, but as he touched the broken edge of the glass, a shooting pain shot up his arm and the world fell sideways.

Apparently there _was_ a blood ward on the windows. Curse his sleep deprivation, he should have been more thorough than this! But one thing was still clear to his fogging mind.

"R.J. betrayed you," Alastor choked out as Lupin sprinted back to help him.

"You can't know that," Lupin insisted as he tried a freezing charm on Alastor's arm, which was sprouting a twisted growth all along it. "R.J. could have been captured or killed and that's why he's not here."

"Then why did th'ward on this window let Greyback through?"

Lupin paled—he didn't have an answer for that. Instead he said, "I'm going to floo us both to St. Mungo's."

Alastor nodded his approval as he felt himself go weightless as Lupin dragged him back to the fireplace. He was _so_ lightheaded, but he needed to stay awake. Talk. "Who's treating me? Get Strout. She's busy with Bode but I don't trust anybody else, 'specially with memories being wiped out every which way. Th'witch might need help wit' the diagamanosis but I want 'er there."

Lupin grabbed some floo powder, crammed him and Alastor into the fireplace, then spoke the address of the hospital. Before the green flames could die down and the sensation of uncontrollable spinning cease, Alastor could do nothing but black out entirely.

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 18 March 1965, 8:33 am_

Antonin Dolohov had known he'd had a contract last night with Fenrir Greyback. He remembered going to meet the werewolf. He remembered being at headquarters of the Knights of Walpurgis (an absolutely terrible name, the Dark Lord should change it to something more fearsome) later that night. He just didn't remember the events in between. Somehow Antonin hadn't even _noticed_ that there was a blank spot until Augustus Rookwood's disembodied head appeared in the headquarters fireplace and announced it for all to hear.

Antonin had studied the mind arts, learning to protect his mind enough that anyone who'd try to tamper with it would at the least have a good struggle first. And Antonin had been crafty about it, devising ways of ensuring that, even if his mind was compromised, he'd still have enough time to alert his future self that something was wrong. And yet, none of those ways had been triggered last night.

He was far from alone in being affected. Even the Dark Lord himself had forgotten, or so Antonin figured since Voldemort immediately started shooting the Cruciatus Curse at everyone in the room. Antonin threw up an Occlumency shield—it could help with pain, but not very much, particularly when the Dark Lord was doing it.

Too many minutes to count later, Lord Voldemort regained his composure and started giving orders. The order Antonin received was to retrieve Broderick Bode from St. Mungo's, before he could give a report to the Unspeakables that was contrary to the innocuous one Rookwood had already popped back to give. Antonin was still itching to kill someone, but he humbly accepted his assignment without argument. The Crucio still shook his insides and he had no desire to be on the receiving end of one again anytime soon—the only good thing about the experience was that Antonin had a renewed appreciation for exactly how much pain his victims would be able to feel when he used it on them.

Antonin apparated to the hospital's entrance and made his way to the fourth floor, where he had to dodge healers rushing through the hall that were too preoccupied with sputtering to each other about some poor wretch who'd been cursed with 'abnormal skin growth' or 'unshakable unconsciousness' or 'contorting spider pain' to notice him. Antonin didn't really care what the emergency actually was, his main concern was that the healers seemed to have come from an observation room that Bode would be most likely to be residing in. Antonin had had several opportunities (mostly in the name of 'visiting' his victims) over the years to get a feel for St. Mungo's procedures, and if his judgment was right, Bode would now be quite alone. A quick peek through the door showed that he was right.

Perfect.

Bode turned his head toward the sound of the creaking door and Antonin quickly shot a stunner at him. Against all odds, the wizard managed to dodge.

"Dolohov," Bode spat as he grabbed his wand (it was strange that it was within reach—shouldn't the healer have deprived him of it? Or had the Unspeakable managed to hide it without her knowing?) and ducked for cover. "What does your dark lord want now?"

 _That_ shocked Antonin. The fact that Voldemort was an up-and-coming dark lord was not a well known one—there were the friends of Tom Riddle before he shed that name and a handful of newer followers (like that Rookwood) but no one else. And even if a follower had accidentally let on the existence of the Dark Lord before he made himself public, that didn't account for Bode recognizing Antonin instantly. If anyone knew the name 'Antonin Dolohov' it was usually as a hired wand who seldom showed his face to anyone but his employers and victims. Perhaps whatever had made Bode a person of interest had bequeathed him with knowledge of the Knights of Walpurgis as well.

But now was not the time for securing answers, just securing the ill-fated wizard.

Bode put up a solid defense, Antonin had to admit. But a solid defense can only go on so long without an exit strategy and St. Mungo's had anti-Apparation wards in the patient areas. Eventually, one of Antonin's Crucios hit and Bode doubled down in pain strong enough to make him drop his wand. A moment to relish the screams, then another stunner and it was over.

Antonin wished—oh how he _wished_ —that he could have drawn this out, to bring Bode right to the brink of death and then make the agony even worse, but he had his orders: get Bode to the Dark Lord for interrogation as soon as possible. Perhaps when that was over, his master would allow Antonin to dispose of him. Or, at least, allow Antonin to watch Lord Voldemort dispose of him. The Dark Lord was the only wizard Antonin had ever known whose expertise in inflicting pain rivaled his own, so it was bound to be entertaining either way.

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 18 March 1965, 8:41 am_

Once Lyall was assured that Alastor Moody was in good hands, he went to where he was truly needed: to his family. He didn't remember evacuating the house, but he _did_ remember planning on taking Hope and the kids to Newt Scamander's home. In many ways, Newt had been a mentor to Lyall in the study of magical creatures but the man was also one of the very few wizards who had gone up against a dark lord and won (or so the rumors went). There were few individuals who Lyall trusted more.

Lyall greeted Newt's wife, Tina, who waited on her doorstep with wand at the ready. Hopefully that meant that his family really _was_ there.

"It's me, it's Lyall," he said, raising his empty hands over his head. "Is everything alright?"

"Thus far," Tina replied, not moving her wand an inch. "Can you verify that you are who I think you are?"

He thought identity verification was a tad overkill, but Tina _had_ been an Auror during Grindelwald's prime so Lyall decided to go along with it. "I don't remember if I set up any passwords with you, but I doubt you'd remember if I did that either. Nobody remembers the first hour of the full moon last night except Dumbledore."

Tina grimaced. "What is the old coot up to now?"

Lyall shrugged. "Whatever it is, he's being tight-lipped about it. Anyway. Would me casting a Patronus Charm be sufficient proof of who I am?"

"I'll have to check with Newt to see if he knows what yours is," Tina said, then quickly cast a Patronus herself. The silvery white creature she created scampered into the house. A moment later, Newt arrived.

"I got your message, Tina," the wizard said.

"'Message'?" Lyall asked. He recalled Moody casting a Patronus Charm before they'd headed to the Department of Mysteries—was using a Patronus as a messenger something that those more closely associated with Dumbledore than he had learned to do?

"Don't worry about it," Newt said, "just cast your Patronus for me and we'll get you back to Hope and the boys."

Lyall nodded—maybe he'd figure it out on his own time. Ensuring that his family was safe with his own eyes took priority. He focused on the day that Hope had given birth to two amazing sons and cast, "Expecto Patronum."

A silvery wolf emerged from the tip of his wand. Looking at it, Lyall couldn't help but feel a bit uneasy—yes, it was a true wolf instead of a werewolf, and the form had been the same for many years, but now it seemed an ominous portent instead of comforting protector.

Newt examined the Patronus in detail and nodded approvingly. "It looks like it's you. Come inside."

Lyall followed Newt (Tina insisted on staying on guard duty) to the guest room, where Hope was looking through some papers. She caught a glimpse of Lyall from the corner of her eye and all but jumped into her husband's arms. "Is everything alright? Did anyone get hurt? Are you alright? You look terrible. What took you so long?"

Lyall stroked his wife's hair and managed a smile. "Everything's fine, love. The werewolf who attacked us has been taken into Ministry custody. I needed to stay and help sort something out. We might have a larger problem on our hands than just a killer werewolf, but it's in the Department of Mysteries' hands now. I'll explain later. But first, you. Have you gotten any rest at all?"

Hope shook her head. "As if I _could_ , knowing you were out there. Remus and Romulus at least managed to drift off sometime around midnight, I think."

Lyall looked at the bed that was closest to the door, where Remus and Romulus were under the covers next to each other, breathing peacefully. He, too, breathed easier.

Everyone was safe.

Lyall turned to his old mentor. "Thank you for keeping them out of danger."

"It wasn't due to much on my part," Newt replied.

Lyall shook his head. "If they had stayed home, they would be injured or worse. R.J.'s safeguards didn't work. Or rather, they don't work against werewolves."

"That's not too surprising, I suppose," Newt said. "Werewolves are _notoriously_ difficult to ward against. Very strong physical barriers would be your best bet, I think."

"But why would R.J. specifically put blood wards up if they wouldn't work?"

" _Blood_ wards?" Newt asked. "I guess he might have just been trying the strongest thing he knew about. Regardless, I think you should probably get a curse breaker or two to look at your house to see what the actual intent was behind the wards. In the meantime, you and your family are free to stay here as long as you need. You both could use some rest, I think."

Lyall and Hope shared a look of agreement and Newt departed. Hope began to clean up the pieces of parchment that she had been looking through.

"What are these?" Lyall asked.

"R.J. left some editorials he was working on on the porch after he finished talking to you and I've been looking through them with your wizard friend," Hope explained, handing over the top piece of parchment to skim over. "Do you remember how I told you about what happened with the black Muggles in Birmingham, when Western Mail asked for everyone to contribute to the stained glass window?"

Lyall nodded. He hadn't really understood why a window would help, but he'd agreed that he and Hope would donate to the cause. It was the decent thing to do, whether you were a Muggle or a wizard. Simple as that.

"The prejudice that faces those people is very similar to the kinds of things werewolves have to put up with."

"Except werewolves are dangerous," Lyall noted.

"So are every other kind of people," Hope said. "Wizards especially. You could point your wand in my face and snuff out my life."

Lyall reached a hand out toward his wife's. "Hope, you know I'd never—"

"You never would," she agreed, taking his hand and giving it a quick squeeze. "But you _could_. And so could a Muggle with a weapon or a werewolf with his claws. Yet how often is it that if the majority decides that they don't like a minority group, that minority is made out to be demons who are certain to kill you? This article makes it pretty clear that most werewolves wouldn't hurt anyone were it not for the extreme circumstances."

"You _do_ realize that this article was written by a werewolf?" Lyall asked.

"Have you forgotten that he saved our sons? Or that you put your trust in him last night?" Then her face fell. "Is that why you've had a change of heart? Did he betray you?"

"I really hope not, but..." Lyall said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Well, he could very likely be the source of a much bigger problem."

"Which is?" Hope prodded.

"It seems that almost everyone in the world lost a portion of their memories early last night. And R.J. hasn't been seen since." He took out the bundle of clothing that he'd retrieved from outside his house. "This is the only tangible proof I have that R.J. existed at all."

"And what do you call the papers I've sprawled over for every forsaken hour of the night?" his wife retorted.

"Alright, point conceded. But instead of looking for insight into werewolves, perhaps we should be looking for insight into R.J. the man instead?" Lyall opened up R.J.'s robe and a quick search through its pockets yielded a book he'd seen once before.

"' _Hairy Snout, Human Heart'_?" Hope read. "It certainly sounds like the name of something R.J. would write."

"Maybe," Lyall conceded. "How about you take the book and I'll go through the articles with a fresh set of eyes?" he suggested.

"Sure," Hope said, then opened the thin volume. A moment later, she said, "Question: if R.J. left a note in this book asking us to tell Albus Dumbledore to do something, should we pass the message on?"

Lyall looked over Hope's shoulder to see a handwritten note on the book's title page.

 _I apologize for being unable to give this message in person—I got stuck in a Well and haven't been able to claw myself out. I am working under the assumption that Dumbledore opened his mind to the possibilities of the universe and I'd appreciate it if he did so again. I will write more after he has done so_ _—_ _just don't let him fiddle with anything beyond creating that initial connection so he doesn't make matters worse._

 _R.J._

"I...I honestly have no idea what to do about this," Lyall admitted. "I mean, Dumbledore is usually the type of person whose judgment I'd trust. It's just that _this very morning_ I saw him accidentally inflict some sort of extreme mental trauma on someone using some technique he'd gotten second-hand from R.J.—quite possibly whatever he seems to be asking Dumbledore to do here."

"Accidents can happen to anybody," Hope reminded him. "Now that Dumbledore is aware of the delicate nature of things, I doubt he'd be careless going forward."

"Dumbledore thought he _was_ being careful," Lyall said. "Honestly, I think he's in the dark as much as any of us but he won't let himself admit it since if people see _him_ of all people at a total loss, the Wizarding World will completely fall apart not long after."

"Then we do our due diligence first," Hope said. "And I already see one glaring issue: this note reads as if R.J. wrote it today, _after_ whatever happened with Dumbledore. He disappeared yesterday. Ergo, he knew what was going to happen."

Lyall frowned. "Not necessarily. I only recovered the book after all that. He very well could have snuck back to our house and left it, acting as if he's 'stuck in a Well.' Which means even that though he's in hiding, he is still working very hard to influence us, for good or ill."

Before Hope could comment, the door opened slightly to reveal a woman's face—Tina Scamander. "I'm sure whatever it is you're talking about is _fascinating_ , but so long as all immediate dangers have passed, _go to sleep_. If you can't do it on your own, I'll be more than happy to get you some tea laced with a strong sleeping draught."

"We should be fine," Hope said before Lyall could accept the offered gift.

"I sure hope so since, by my reckoning, your two boys are due to be waking up soon. Newt and I know our way around boys of that age. We'll take good care of them, but we'd like to have some conscious parents to hand them off to when we reach our limits of awakeness. So: _sleep_."

There was little arguing with that so Lyall and Hope retired to the guest bed. It was still some time before Lyall could fall asleep, however, so he began to scribble with a pencil his various thoughts on the nearest paper surface, which happened to be _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_. He planned on erasing the ramblings in the morning, but the process of getting his thoughts out of his mind eventually worked to calm himself enough into falling into blessed unconsciousness.

* * *

 _Outside of the Well of Lost Plots, 19 March 1965, 3:40 am_

For LORD VOLDEMORT, infiltrating a mind was an art. He doesn't merely snap the mind in two by sheer force—that defeated the purpose. No, He had long since come to the conclusion that it was far better to break the mind slowly, breaking the inconsequential bits like snapping twigs, all the while circling around the one bit of information He actually wanted to know before striking to get it.

And if the victim knew Occlumency? By all means let the poor fool expend all his willpower on protecting things that didn't really matter. The Dark Lord had more than enough mental stamina to keep a steady push throughout the process and still be able to hammer down hard on the Occlumency barriers on the most precious of secrets.

That final hammering down— _that_ was where LORD VOLDEMORT had to be most careful. Too hard and He only got fragments of what He needed. Too soft and the poor fool might actually get enough hope to strengthen the barriers and resume the fight harder than ever. At that point, it was hardly worth continuing if the victim put all his focus on what truly needed protection. Maybe LORD VOLDEMORT could keep trying, but He'd rather take a break doing more important things and return to the task later once He was refreshed and the victim's fierce determination subdued on its own.

Broderick Bode's mental shields were stronger than your average wizard. Not many 18-year-olds could boast enough Occlumency ability to go through multiple rounds of mental infiltration with the Dark Lord without breaking. This would be attempt number 4.

The fact that the young man in question was an Unspeakable could account for that. At least, it would were it not for Rookwood's prior warnings. Bode had _something_ impossible guiding his actions, that much was certain. LORD VOLDEMORT would have suspected that Bode was being possessed by a horcrux were it not for the fact that He knew He'd recognize that kind of dark magic instantaneously.

The Dark Lord strode into the small dark room. Bode sat there disheveled and unwilling to acknowledge His presence with so much as a glance. All the Unspeakable did was mouth words to himself over and over, as he had for every moment that he'd been in His presence.

LORD VOLDEMORT didn't bother with preamble, he merely stretched His mental muscles and prepared Himself for another onslaught.

 _I'M A LITTLE TEAPOT SHORT AND STOUT!_ Bode's mind screamed the instant the mental connection was reestablished. _THIS IS MY HANDLE, THIS IS MY SPOUT!_

Repeating a pathetic Muggle novelty song over and over. It was an odd tactic, yet it was surprisingly effective in reinforcing Bode's Occulmency shields. The wizard had mentally sung about being a teapot hundreds of times, each iteration being out of tune in a different unpredictable way. It required the Legilimens that much more focus to ignore it—and though the Dark Lord was most certainly capable of that focus, it was more draining than what he was used to.

LORD VOLDEMORT would try things a little differently this time. He went straight for the secret that Bode was protecting at all costs. Bode gasped in surprise, but the shields went up before the Dark Lord could access the secret. LORD VOLDEMORT hammered at that thought again and again, pushing His drive to know further and further, proving to Himself that He could one day be impossible to thwart in the mental realm. And just when that onslaught felt like it couldn't go on any longer, the Dark Lord summoned all of His strength and prepared to hammer once more.

 _WHEN I GET ALL STEAMED UP HEAR ME SHOUT: TIP ME OVER AND POUR ME OUT! I'M A LITTLE TEAPOT SHORT AND STOUT!_

But when LORD VOLDEMORT brought the hammer down, it wasn't on Bode's most precious secret. It was on a secret that the Dark Lord had noticed in His prior attempts, one that was almost as protected as the most precious one but that He hadn't focused on at all—at least, not until now. Bode hadn't been ready. The young Unspeakable's mind coughed up the knowledge before he could stop himself.

It was the feeling of a spell, one with no incantation, and yet it was strong enough to feel connected to the very cosmos. Was this what Bode had experienced with Dumbledore? And if it was, what could possibly be _more_ worthy of keeping secreted away?

The connection snapped, but not before one final word leaked out: _Reintegrate_. It was spoken not with Bode's own voice, but with Dumbledore's.

The Dark Lord probed back in once more to see if there was anything else He could grab while Bode was vulnerable, but it seemed like Bode's last move to protect his secrets had also snapped his psyche in the process. A pity, but it was unavoidable, the Dark Lord supposed. Hopefully the secret He _did_ learn would prove to be profitable.

Rookwood had reported everything Bode had said while he'd been eavesdropping on him and one statement now stood out to the Dark Lord. _You're lucky that I was your guinea pig or that never would have worked_. If by 'that' Bode meant the spell He'd just gleaned from the Unspeakable's mind...

LORD VOLDEMORT cast His newfound spell upon Bode. The Dark Lord wasn't exactly the type of wizard to call something beautiful, but that undercurrent of possibility, that whiff of power that engulfed His senses...it was certainly worthy of the term. Unfortunately, harnessing the spell would not work merely because the Dark Lord _wanted_ that power firmly within His grasp. He was certain that that wouldn't be a problem, however—Voldemort only had to mentally speak the word Dumbledore had.

"Reintegrate."

Bode convulsed. The Dark Lord smiled in satisfaction—naturally, the spell would take effect on His first try.

But when Voldemort probed Bode's mind, He once again found unusable mush. It was a different quality of mush than before, to be certain, but still mush. Useless—completely useless. And since He'd wrangled everything He could out of Bode, the Unspeakable was no longer needed.

"Avada Kedavra."

He came to the conclusion that "reintegrate" wasn't something that was supposed to be performed twice on the same person. But, perhaps, it would work on someone who was similar to Bode in a fundamental way. Perhaps it was something that worked only on Unspeakables?

And, as luck would have it, LORD VOLDEMORT had an Unspeakable who would be willing to do whatever He asked of him. Maybe it would be wasteful to potentially turn Rookwood's mind to mush, but it wasn't like He would never have the chance to recruit another Unspeakable to His Knights again. Might as well find out before Rookwood became an indispensable asset rather than a merely useful one.

But Rookwood was currently back at the Ministry, performing his job, and it wouldn't do to call him away immediately. But after the sun rose and Rookwood was free to return, however, the young man _would_ become the key to some invaluable insight. One way or another...

* * *

 **Author's Note**

This chapter has been an _absolute_ pain in the butt to write. I'd assumed when I'd started posting chapters that I was close to wrangling this one, only to realize that _every single scene_ needed a major overhaul (and some of those overhauls, in turn, had to be completely rewritten yet again or spun off into completely different scenes), so apologies for making you wait these past few months.

Fun fact: That thing about Welsh people raising money to replace the stained glass window after a bombing in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963? 100-percent true. We Muggles can be awesome sometimes. If you want to know more, go do a little digging on the artist John Petts.

All my love,

pisoprano


	5. Transparency

DISCLAIMER: JK Rowling is the gem responsible for Harry Potter and his world. I only remixed her work (with a dash of some other people's) a few times.

* * *

Transparency

* * *

Lysander felt a second usage of the Cognition Spell. Since that was the signal Remus had instructed Dumbledore to perform when he'd gotten _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ , that meant that they'd be able to get some form of communication going between the Well and Remus' most recent reality. Before Lysander went to inform Remus of the news, however, Lysander analyzed the signature of the Cognition Spell to see how well Dumbledore had followed directions.

Lysander noted that there had been one improvement, in that there was very little idle time between the start and end of the spell. Other than that, though, it had not been ideal. Despite the fact that Remus had explicitly told Dumbledore to _not_ go poking around, it seemed that the old wizard had once again touched upon the Reintegrate function. Lysander made a quick probe of the Well to confirm that, yes, there hadn't been any new arrivals this time either. That meant there were a few options for what had actually happened.

1\. Dumbledore thought that reintegrating someone again was necessary despite the warning.

2\. The Cognition Spell was malfunctioning with its Reintegration function.

3\. Dumbledore had used the Cognition Spell on the same person he had before, the unknown person who'd had his or her mind protected in the future.

4\. Dumbledore bequeathed his knowledge of the Cognition Spell on some hapless person who'd started casting it and who assumed that the Reintegration function was necessary.

5\. Everyone in the future had the Invisibility function turned on for reasons only Saint George knew.

Regardless of the circumstances, though, Remus needed to get brought in the loop about what happened. Lysander wasn't in the werewolf's presence at the moment (which, when he thought about it, was rather strange, since didn't remember leaving) so he willed his being to be taken to Remus' side.

"Lysander?" Remus asked. "Did you detect the Cognition Spell again?"

"Sure did," Lysander confirmed, "but the Reintegration function was _also_ used again, so I'm honestly not sure if Dumbledore misunderstood your directions or if he happened to be casting it again without prompting from your dad. You _did_ say something along the lines of 'Warning! Do not touch unmarked spell functions!', right?"

"Let me find the exact wording," Remus said as he pulled up _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_. He opened the volume to reread his message but was quickly distracted. "I...I assumed that everything we summoned would be a copy that conforms to how we remember it."

"More or less," Mr. Author confirmed—making Lysander jump, since he hadn't realized that the man without appearance was currently around. "But there is certainly the potential for interference with other non-canonical realities. There's a reason that I've ended up as you when I tried being supported by the substandard creators instead of the original creator."

"What about my reality, could _it_ interfere with things here?" Remus asked.

"Well, we _do_ feel the aftereffects of the Cognition Spell," Lysander pointed out. "And by 'we', I'm pretty sure I just mean 'me', since you've only felt the spell when Saint George prepped you with the Memory Book and when you used it on Dumbledore (neither of which properly count, since I've noticed that it feels different from inside the Well) and Mr. Author wouldn't have had reason to open his mind to full-fledged realities since he isn't actually a time-traveler."

"I wasn't talking about insubstantial mental echoes coming from my universe," Remus said. He held up the open book at Lysander's eye level. "I'm talking about concrete changes. My dad wrote back."

Lysander took the book and squinted at the messy scrawl that now cut across the pages:

 _WHO IN THE NAME OF MERLIN'S FILTHY LEFT SOCK ARE YOU R.J.?_

 _You appear and disappear without any warning at all_

 _You put up blood wards only to let Fenrir Greyback in my house_

 _You somehow got_ _Albus Dumbledore_ _to drive an Unspeakable completely mad in seconds_

 _You are somehow responsible for causing the entire world experiencing mass amnesia_

 _Twice!_

 _This book is going nowhere near Dumbledore until I know what's really going on_

"Sounds like he thinks you're a nutcase," Mr. Author said over Lysander's shoulder, making him jump yet again. He _really_ needed to get a bell or something for the Generic werewolf.

"But when I wrote to him, I didn't think _he'd_ be able to tell _me_ that—not in any direct way," Remus said. "This is going to drastically simplify communication and we'll actually be able to find out what's going on over there instead of having to guess based on what little information we _do_ have."

"We enlightened wizards do not guess, we _theorize_ ," Lysander corrected.

Remus dismissed the semantics, "rennervate, enervate. Not important. What _is_ important is that I might be able to actually explain to him everything—what I'm doing, maybe even who I really am."

"You could have done that before," Lysander pointed out.

"Not in a way that I could get nuanced feedback without relying upon Dumbledore casting a particular spell at the right moment. Besides, it looks like Dad needs to be assured before he's willing to contact Dumbledore. That'll be _much_ easier with two-way communication."

"We still don't know what happens when a person becomes aware of time travel without a time-traveler to latch upon," Lysander said.

"Then I'll accept your best guess—sorry, _theory_ ," Remus corrected.

Lysander turned it over in his mind. "Well, you almost certainly aren't going to get any new people deported to the Well, since the universe's person-count won't shoot up any red flags to Blair. Most likely scenario is the hour of amnesia, I'd suspect—if I hadn't felt the Cognition Spell, I'd have believed the amnesia your dad mentioned would have been because of unprotected time-travel suspicions. Which is a problem, since any messages you write will be forgotten in their entirety."

"He could just break the important bits of information into chunks and dole them out one hour at a time," Mr. Author suggested.

"I've got about half a dozen things I could tell him," Remus said. "I'd have to make sure he'd be willing to synchronize six hours of communication time we'd need. And maybe I should make sure he can remove the curse I left on the house, so I guess that's _seven_ hours. Lucky us."

"He wouldn't necessarily have to go through all the tidbits at once, as long as your dad makes note of his starting and ending times," Mr. Author said. "Synchronization with the Well's lack of time should not pose any difficulty as long as your dad keeps accurate minutes in my book."

"Except that Dumbledore might be testing the Cognition Spell willy-nilly," Lysander realized. "Any time he does so, it'll throw off the synchronization between the timeline and the Well. Now, in a perfect world we could just have Lyall ask Dumbledore to put the Cognition Spell on hold, but I'm going to doubt that Lyall is even willing to do _that_ much at this point."

Remus swore under his breath. "Knowing my dad, you'd probably be right about that. So how do we stop Dumbledore from casting the Cognition Spell?"

"I'm not sure," Lysander said as he moved his fingers through his hair. "Honestly, it might not even be Dumbledore, since—if your dad's complaints are anything to go by—it looks like he got some poor Unspeakable involved in some process that drove him to madness. Just going by context, there could be some side effect of the Reintegration function that only manifests itself outside of the Well or by some other circumstances, but it's safe to assume that if one Unspeakable got involved with the Cognition Spell, the whole Department of Mysteries is going to analyze the living Lumos lights out of it. You know, we might be better off if we avoid the problem altogether and just go Schrödinger on this one."

"I'm sorry, but _what_ did you just say?" Remus asked. "'Shero-dinger'?"

"He was a Muggle scientist," Lysander explained, dredging up some knowledge he'd once gleaned from a book called _Physics for Wizards: The Crazy Things Muggles Think Are Normal_. "He used to play at killing cats by sticking one in a box that had a 50-50 shot of offing them. The way he figured it, if you haven't opened the box, you don't know if the cat is dead or alive so it might as well be both."

"That is disturbing, even by Muggle standards," Mr. Author noted.

"But what does that have to do with our current situation?" Remus asked.

Lysander smiled. "I'm the only one of us who actually notices when the Cognition Spell is even cast. If I stay away and don't inform you of what's going on in your previous timeline, that information isn't going to be synchronized with you while you're making contact with your dad—if neither of us observes the other, both our states will be true due to the observation effect and they won't conflict with each other. As soon as you're done, you can come find me and I'll let you know if there were any spells cast that you'd have been affected by, but your actual communication protocols will remain blissfully unaffected."

"Are you sure that the Well works like that?" Mr. Author asked. "Because I have never heard of such a thing."

"It's an extrapolation of the principles of quantum tangling—the Well and real versions of the _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ book (or possibly even _any_ book) seem to be tangled up so that one affects the other through spooky distance actions. It's all part of the principles of uncertainty." Lysander couldn't remember all the particulars of of Muggle physics, but he figured he was close enough that they'd be able to apply it successfully.

"First off," Mr. Author said, "as I've said before, I really don't think communication _can_ happen with anything but _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_ —the interloper would have to live in the loonybin to consider leaving such a huge loophole."

"Shh!" Lysander chided. "Don't use the 'L' word!"

Lysander imagined that Mr. Author was furrowing his brow. "You have a problem with the word 'loophole'?"

"No, the _other_ L-word," Lysander hissed.

"Loonybi—?"

"I said don't use the word!"

"Alright, I won't!" Mr. Author relented. "Original point about me being the only known authorized vector of communication still stands. And second of all, why would the Well care about anything to do with Muggle physics?"

"The interloper is a Muggle, right? Why wouldn't she be happy to support Muggle physics? We don't have time in the Well, but we've got to have _something_ that gives us a linear narrative."

"We have 'before' and 'after'—why do we need something else?"

"Lysander going off on his own would just be a precautionary measure, right?" Remus interjected. "We don't need his assistance for making contact with my dad, so it shouldn't hurt anything to not have him there."

Lysander gave an 'I win!' happy-dance.

"But Lysander," Remus continued, "if my dad tells me that something went horribly wrong on his end, I won't wait until after the full synchronization to come and find you."

Lysander gave his two werewolf friends a thumbs up. "Sounds good! See you two—or at least I'll see Remus and pretend to see Mr. Author—on the other side!"

And with that, Lysander transplanted himself to a remote corner of the Well to watch and wait.

* * *

Augustus Rookwood ceased to exist.

He hadn't known what to expect when the Dark Lord summoned him into his chambers with a task to perform, but experiencing memory overload and then being transported to a realm of nothingness was definitely not it.

Augustus took stock of his situation. He remembered spending the last decade or so in the walls of Azkaban but just as fresh were the memories of working for Voldemort in the 1960s. The biggest discrepancy was that only the younger part of himself remembered the incident with Bode and the acute universal amnesia. And as much as he'd like to blame amnesia for his problems, Augustus was not the kind of wizard who merely accepted the easiest answer to think of.

Actually, this was far more likely to be related to that werewolf Dumbledore and the others had been talking about—R.J., he thought it was—who had vanished off the face of the Earth more than once. So whatever had happened to Augustus, it was in all likelihood reversible. That was comforting. Now he just had to find someone who knew the way to get out of here.

In thinking about finding help, a blond man appeared before him. His first instinct was that it was a Malfoy, but this particular man had eyes that were too wide and expressive to be any of that clan. He didn't seem the type to be a Death Eater—not with that carefree grin—but it wasn't as if Augustus was identifiable as a follower of the Dark Lord at first glance either.

"Hello!" the man said, shaking Augustus' hand. "I'm Lysander Scamander. Welcome to the Well of Lost Plots! You know the riddle 'where do Vanished objects go'? This is the answer when you're talking about people, at least in a metafictional context. Do you remember how you got here? I've detected three uses of the Reintegration function in recent memory but you were the only person to actually show up. And by 'recent' I can't really give you any hard numbers since we don't have time here. What year do you remember it being?"

"I suppose you would say that I was 'reintegrated' in 1965," Augustus replied as he tried to process everything this Scamander had told him. Even for an Unspeakable, this was more than a little strange. But at the very least vanishings, metafictionality (whatever that meant), and flexible time were all a part of it. As long as he kept listening without saying too much, he ought to be able to get his bearings.

"Right around when Remus came back, that's good to know," Scamander mused to himself.

"'Remus'?" Augustus prompted.

"Wait, he probably never used the name," Scamander corrected himself. "He was going by R.J. Thewlis last. Ring any bells?"

"The werewolf?" Augustus asked, far too grateful for having eavesdropped on that conversation since it made him seem more knowledgeable than he actually was. "From what I've gathered, he made quite a mess of things when he disappeared."

"A lost hour isn't all that bad," Scamander said. "You probably couldn't have discovered this, but R.J. was having his mind read by Voldemort at the time. Better that he came here and everyone forget the last hour than let that psychopath know everything."

'That psychopath' happened to be someone Augustus would follow to the ends of the Earth, but he opted to not reveal that fact to one so obviously biased. "And now that we are 'here', how might we return to our world?"

"That's the hard part," Scamander said. "No one leaves the Well, except that once with Remus, and he was only able to go back to your universe through extreme abuse of a loophole. That loophole has since been closed. But don't lose hope just yet. We _think_ we've got a way of establishing communication between here and there, though. And as much as the others think otherwise, I'm not sure if only Remus' book was affected by this. We might as well _try_ some other books, am I right? You're from 1965; have you written any books—and not necessarily books, for all we know other written materials might work too—that someone else might decide to read? I'm working under the hypothesis that writing in your own book here could deface the copy there and vice versa."

Most of what Augustus had written in his life was either a school assignment or a work report—neither of which were the sorts of things that anyone would be likely to pick up and reread anytime soon. But there was _one_ book that might work. "Would an Unspeakable log book do the trick?" he asked. Certainly it would continue to be updated by some other poor intern after Augustus' unexpected departure.

Scamander lit up. "You're an Unspeakable? No way, so am I! Thank the interloper for throwing us a bone! I've been spending so much of my non-existent time around Remus and our author friend—and they are wonderful, don't get me wrong, but sometimes you need Mysteries alumni to really get the weird things, you know? Oh! What is it like to have Pluto still be a planet? My mum ended up destroying the model in the Space Chamber when running away from Death Eaters, and of course they fixed it later but then they _destroyed it again_ before I could join up because Muggles decided to pretend it didn't exist anymore. Am I talking too fast? I guess Death Eaters probably still aren't common knowledge in 1965."

"I think I've heard of them."

Augustus could have denied it—the Death Eaters were still called the Knights of Walpurgis at that time, so not even the Dark Lord himself would have known the term—but it'd be better to be vague in case he had to say something contradictory later. As for the incident Scamander described, Augustus guessed that the man—like himself—had acquired memories from a future that had never happened.

But figuring out how to escape took priority. Augustus prompted, "And the log book?"

"Sorry, yes, yes, you're right. The log book ought to work—they're certainly sticklers about making sure that _everything_ is recorded so outside-time shouldn't pass by too much. And I'm not sure which log book you'll need, so you should just summon it up yourself."

"Accio log book," Augustus said. Out of the nothingness of the void, a familiar book flew into his hand.

"I didn't mean _literally_ summon it," Scamander said. "Though I guess that that method _does_ work too. In the Well it's more of a 'I want this to exist, therefore it does'."

"Good to know," Augustus said, his mind churning at the possibilities. "And I just pretend the book doesn't exist to send it back to my world?"

"No, I'm pretty sure it'd be more of an automatic update. If what you're suggesting worked, I could just wish myself back to whence I came. Actually, let me test if that does work real quick," he said, falling silent for an all-too-short moment. "Ah, nope. Didn't expect it to. And honestly, the message in books thing isn't plausible at all—it's more of a loophole that may or may not have been left open by the interloper that we _think_ hasn't been noticed by Blair yet, so we should milk it for all its worth, capiche? Just don't refer to any timey-wimeyness, since that'll draw Blair's attention faster than you can say 'no more books for you'."

Augustus nodded in acknowledgment as he flipped to the last log he'd recorded. In the margins, he wrote, _I am in the Well of Lost Plots and this is my only way of communicating with the outside world. Please write back._

"How long will it take for answer to appear?" Augustus asked.

Scamander shrugged. "Time isn't a thing here, remember? We've got before and after and—if I'm right— _lots_ of quantum physics keeping things connected or disconnected. It's why I'm currently not bringing you to meet Remus—I don't want whatever temporal aspects from your moment of arrival to accidentally mess up the synchronization between universes while he's trying to communicate with his dad—you showing up might skip time ahead too far and Remus _really_ needs the uninterrupted real-time hours for what he's doing to work. Anyway, while we wait for Remus to complete making contact, would you mind telling me what I should call you? I think I forgot to ask earlier—sorry, I do that sometimes."

"I'm Broderick Bode," Augustus lied. "Dumbledore tested a spell on me to try and protect my mind from being erased again. It didn't work and, next thing I know, I'm here."

Hopefully no one who knew the real Bode would ever be able to call him out on it. At the very least, Scamander didn't seem to suspect anything.

* * *

Ah, quantum physics. So often science-fiction writers use it to justify anything that looks like magic. Since I've got _actual magic_ to work with, I'm not going to let any of my characters get away with using quantum physics as technobabble that _works_ —particularly when they are in a space that is so divorced from natural laws as the Well of Lost Plots (or the JK-verse, to a lesser extent) is. I personally find it more interesting to work within the rules of technobabble derived from fiction as a meta-concept instead of bad science (even if both are equally bogus), so I'll keep utilizing the former for defining what the Well can and can't do. Lysander, though, is allowed to know _just_ enough of the latter to screw himself over.

For the unaware: Schrödinger never killed cats except in a purely hypothetical exercise about quantum superposition (the idea that a particle can be in different states simultaneously, based on its probability of occurring). The observer effect happens because on a sufficiently small scale, bouncing anything (even a photon) off the particle for measurement purposes will affect the results, as most famously seen in the Double-Slit Experiment (and contrary to popular belief, a conscious observer isn't necessary, just a measuring device). Quantum entanglement (also called "spooky action at a distance") is when two or more very small particles become so intrinsically linked that measuring one particle affects the behavior of the other, regardless of where it is. The uncertainty principle is about how the more precise a position measurement of a particle is, the less precise you can be about the velocity measurement of that particle (and vice versa). And just about everything weird about quantum mechanics happens at a subatomic level, so it having a direct impact on macroscopic beings is extremely unlikely.

In other news, I have not forgotten about this story. I know things are slow-going, but I refuse to let the story end until it is properly complete. Given how frequently I've had to scrap everything and start a chapter over, I can't say when you'll get the next update, but I'll remain optimistic that it'll be soon. Stay tuned.

All my love,

pisoprano


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